Woodless Graphite Pencil

I found myself in a situation of great frustration last week so I decided to step away from the source and take a breather. While going for a walk, I realized that I had left behind my sketchbook. I quickly went to a nearby shop to pick up an inexpensive book and something to draw with. I admit to having an obsession with sketchbooks. They are the best gift, as I have a shelf filled with those that are full and those waiting to be filled and any time I'm in a store, I tend to gravitate to the sketchbook display only to begin an internal dialogue convincing myself that I don't need another sketchbook. But, in a moment of desperation, knowing which shops have sketchbooks becomes extremely rewarding.

Armed with new materials in hand, I headed to a nearby park, to people-watch and produce something remarkable and profound. Well, nothing at all worth sharing came despite my determination. I did, however, discover a new tool: The Pentalic Woodless Graphite Pencil.

It's solid graphite (with a lacquer coating). There is no wood, which makes for a pencil which feels heavier in hand and provides a rich, velvety smooth application. There's more graphite than the usual pencil and that leads to using it from detail work to broad coverage. Below, are two better examples, once I'd grown an appreciation for the pencil and its effect. The first, just a sketch which shows how varied the tone can be and the second from a Summer concert at a local park.

Sketches & Junk

I carry a sketchbook. I do. But, sometimes sketches don't always happen in the sketchbook. The top image was done on a piece of dot-matrix printer paper. While those printers are not in high use, there's nothing wrong with using the paper for things like making lists. Then, there's the instances where I sketch on my lists like the the next two images. There is a good deal of pressure to carry a sketchbook and do something meaningful in it. Afterall, someone may want to flip through.

Road Trip

Spot illustration, digital

Here's a spot illustration I did which was inspired by Looney Tunes backgrounds showing Bugs' underground travels or Wile E. Coyote's antics.

Summer Heat

It seems fitting to share these sketches on New York's hottest day of the year so far. While these have plenty of flaws, they were executed quickly and served their purpose as placeholders for design work. All were done using a black Prismacolor Watercolor pencil. I didn't use any water on these to activate the watercolor effect that these pencils are designed for. Instead, I opted for this pencil because of its rich black color and softness. They scan well and reproduce well without dealing with some of the flatness and glare issues graphite tends to have.

New Yorker Cover Contest

Over at James Gurney's blog last week, Jim invited readers to submit to The New Yorker magazine's "Unfinished Cover Contest". I think the contest was unofficial, but after the magazine began receiving entries, the editor's responded favorably and Jim reminded his readers to enter. Below is the unfinished cover as it printed for the July 4th issue and my completion and entry to the contest.

The unfinished cover as it appeared on newsstands.

My completed cover and entry into the contest.

Details to enter are on Jim's blog.

Gesture Session

I recently discovered a site with a figure drawing script. You can choose from a short list of subjects and set a timer on how long the 'pose' lasts. Other nice features are keeping all the photos in grayscale and scaling the image to fill the entire browser window. It's not the same as doing these types of exercises from a live model, but when it comes to subjects like big cats and horses, this may be more convenient.

Discretion is advised on the site with this notice: "Every single picture in every category is potentially NSFW!" due to costumed and uncostumed models. The horses and big cats are uncostumed which is my guess as to how every picture in every category is potentially NSFW.


Here's the link: http://lovecastle.org/draw/


Below are some sketches from my gesture session.

10 second warm-up gestures

30 second gestures

60 second gestures

90 second gesture

30 second gestures

30 second gestures

New Book Jacket: Bambi & The Yearling

 
Here's my painting of a deer on a book jacket for the Book-of-the-Month Club's 2-in-1 edition of Bambi by Felix Salten & The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Anne concept sketches

Here's a fun video I found of art imitating life imitating art imitating life...

Also, here's some Anne of Green Gable concept sketches and the wonderful final by Claire Keane.

Tangled in the art of Keanes

After seeing Tangled at the end of last year and finding lots of concept art making its way on the internet I discovered the art of Claire Keane who works as an artist for the Visual Development Team at Disney Animation .

Claire helped develop the character of Rapunzel for the film and in doing so helped shape the world in which she lives in: how she would dress, do her chores, decorate her space. Claire began this exploration by keeping a sketchbook handy and documenting various points in her day but doing it as Rapunzel would. How would Rapunzel do the laundry, make dinner, clean etc. The interior murals of Rapunzel's tower serve as the sketchbook of her impressions of the world as seen from the confines of her tower.

Concept art by Claire Keane for Tangled

Claire is the daughter of Glen Keane , a veteran giant in the animation world having worked on Tarzan, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Beast from Beauty and the Beast and Ariel from The Little Mermaid to name a few. Glen was instrumental in directing and supervising the animation for Tangled and is fortunately a link for young animators to Walt Disney's venerable Nine Old Men since beginning with Disney in the 1970's and learning directly from those masters. Claire is also the grand-daughter of Bil Keane (Glen's father) of Family Circus fame who has been bringing the adventures of Billy to newspapers everywhere.

I approached Claire to work on a book jacket for Anne of Green Gables as part of the ongoing series of Classics for the Children's Book-of-the-Month Club . Claire is really great to work with. Her initial sketches provided concepts which explored setting, character and mood. Eventually, through a few conversations and back and forth we were on track to produce a piece of art which is rich in character and has beautiful tones and incredible lighting.

 

When the samples came in, I sent a bunch to Claire and asked when she was signing one for me if she wouldn't mind signing my copy of The Art of Tangled which my kids gave me for Christmas.

Original Glen Keane sketch in my copy of The Art of Tangled.

Yesterday, I received my books and to my surprise, Claire asked her dad to sign my book and I couldn't be more thrilled with what he did.

Deer

Mermaids!

The summer weather inspired these sketches.